Monday, 25 August 2014

The sponsors of ideology find they have made a monster

Having spent billions, the
Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are finding that money can't buy loyalty

Paul
VallelyIndependent/UK24 August 2014

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Thanks to
the immediacy of television, innocent civilians in Syria were writhing from gas
attacks before our eyes, with the blame laid on their own government. Yet
despite a red line having been crossed by this use of chemical weapons, the
international community decided against air strikes on the Assad regime.
Instead we encouraged two oil-rich Arab states, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to
continue arming rebel groups to oust the ruthless dictator in Damascus. Now,
thanks to those weapons, one of the groups has grown into the Frankenstein's
monster of the so-called Islamic State whose brutal fighters have swept through
Syria and Iraq, crucifying and beheading like a deadly inhuman tide.

Saudi Arabia has been a major source of financing
to rebel and terrorist organisations since the 1970s, thanks to the amount it
has spent on spreading its puritan version of Islam, developed by Mohammed
Abdul Wahhab in the 18th century. The US State Department has estimated that
over the past four decades Riyadh has invested more than $10bn (£6bn) into
charitable foundations in an attempt to replace mainstream Sunni Islam with the
harsh intolerance of its Wahhabism. EU intelligence experts estimate that 15 to
20 per cent of this has been diverted to al-Qa'ida and other violent jihadists.

The only other official Wahhabi country is Saudi's
Gulf neighbour Qatar, which is, per capita, the richest country in the world.
It likes to paint itself as a more liberal and open version of the Muslim sect.
Its newest and biggest mosque is named after Wahhab, but this is the fun,
football-loving version. There is no religious police force or powerful class
of clerics to enforce morality. Qatar's Al Jazeera television network stands in
contrast with the region's state-controlled media, and the Qataris are
investing in the West, including the London Stock Exchange.

But that is not the crucial difference. Where the
Saudis tend to support restrictive strong-man regimes like their own across the
Arab world, the Qataris, throughout the Arab Spring, have backed grassroots
Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The tiny country has given
$200m to Hamas, which is constantly firing low-grade rockets from Gaza into
Israel. It is more open-minded towards the Shia Muslims of Iran and Hezbollah
in Lebanon, whom the Saudis see as enemies. It even has good relations with the
Taliban. And it has been the biggest funder of the Syrian rebels, with sources
in Doha estimating it has spent as much as $3bn in Syria alone.

The result
of all this is that Qatar and Saudi have channelled funds, arms and salaries to
different groups in Syria. Until last year they were creating rival military
alliances and structures. But their efforts at discrimination have been in
vain. On the ground the rebel groups have been porous, with personnel switching
to whichever was the best supplied. Fighters grew their beards or shaved them
off to fit the ideology of the latest supplier. Many moved to whichever group
was having most success on the battlefield. Key Qataris and Saudis felt it
didn't matter as long as the result was the fall of Assad. But eventually two
of the most extreme groups began to dominate, and eventually one of them,
Jabhat al-Nusra, lost dominance to the other, Isis – the ruthless and potent
force which has declared itself the Islamic State.

Only towards the end have the funders realised the
error of their strategy. The Qatar government has stemmed the flow of funds. At
first it believed it could change the ideology of those it funded once the war
against Assad was over. But now it realises it was creating a sleeping monster,
as the Saudis had done when they financed the Taliban to fight the Soviets in
the 1980s. In April, the Saudis sacked the head of their intelligence services,
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who had been responsible for the details of arming
the Syrian rebels. His blunders led to the massive empowerment of the kind of
grassroots Islamism which is the greatest threat to the Saudi claim to be the
leader of global Islam because of its vast wealth and its custodianship of the
holy city of Mecca.

They have left it too late. The genie is out of the
bottle. Some funds continue to flow from wealthy Qatari individuals and from
conservative Saudi preachers collecting funds through their television shows.
But the terrorists of the Islamic State, who were earning $8m a month from a
Syrian gas field where they have established robust logistical lines, have
added a further $1m a day from the half dozen Iraqi oilfields they have seized.
Worse still, the conflict in Iraq has solidified into religiously defined
ethnic identity lines.[Abridged]

Paul Vallely is visiting professor in public ethics
at Chester Universityhttp://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/too-late-the-sponsors-of-ideology-find-they-have-made-a-monster-9687723.html

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About Me

I am not an academic. I have been a commercial beekeeper in New Zealand for most of my working life, except for four years in detention as a conscientious objector during WW2. Those years were particularly formative for me. I have retained my horror of war and the suffering still being caused by armed conflict and violence in so many places. My convictions have been nurtured by my Methodist church connection, though my pacifism has been deplored by some good people.

Expect no slick answers here; I am still a searcher myself. How can a just and peaceful society develop from this chaos, and what are the obstacles in the way?

Most of the articles posted here are from other sources. I look for writers, wherever they can be found, who can throw light on what is happening in our world. If you would like to learn a little more about myself, please read this biographical interview series conducted by my granddaughter, Kyla.